Making Heros Useful Again

Did a few tests because I was curious.

First dpm: Started DPM with max orbs
Second dpm: Started DPM with 0 orbs, but with Combo buffed.
Third dpm: Started DPM with no buffs (stance, booster, rage, combo)

Divided by three for single target, this pans out to be:
7.157m, 7.027m, and 6.759m dpm respectively.

Take what you will from the above numbers. I don't think a 400k damage loss 10-15 times (4-6m total damage) over 50 minutes would do much for your overall DPM 50. These inefficiencies are also included in other class DPM tests.

 

Honest question so I can better understand the state of the game from different funding perspectives:

• Why are you struggling to find a run as a cleave? Is it a cultural thing?
• What bosses are you struggling to find a run in? Does there need to be a mechanical change to the boss to improve accessibility to the class?
• (Example: Alyosha 's point on all cure usage with Horntails right arm w/o cleave, Dunas platform being too high so you only hit the boss like a fraction of the time due to height constraints.)
  
• What is a reasonable buff that you'd like to see instead of just saying "that's up to the gms to figure out"? Is it damage? How much? 2, 5, 10%?

I'm still having a blast playing my DK

 

i thought u dont play ur dk anymore jc o.o

 

Are you able to share your funding, just a general number, to give a perspective how good/bad 7m dummy dpm really is?

 

Uh thats on about 4-5b in funding?
134 sword, 12 atk cape, and 14 atk gloves. Sword gets used on both my hero and paladin, and my cape/gloves on all my other accounts.

 

The only class that I mainly play is hero. Non stop play him and enjoy it very much. We don't really need any changes, but if there is one, then I would like for our third job skill Shout to be buff. Atleast change the damage percent from 30% to 100%

 

Don't think it matters too much but here is my damage on cleaving dummies for 1min (I use a Fast 4 sword)

 

Not sure if it matters, but DK 3-target dummy dpm

MW20/cider/SI/SE/Zerk:


also the same DK that did 500k dpm30 for pb body

 

buff dk's pls

 

hero do be kinda bussin fr fr
mw10 and rage only no cap.

 

Just curious, why do you think it is that other classes are being represented with 20b+ in gear, while heroes are not, if its not that the hero character job itself sucks?

If it truly is how you say that heroes suck only because no hero players are motivated enough to inject 20b+ funding into a hero character, doesn't that very lack of motivation provide insight into the current state of the hero job? NL and other meta job players have no problem finding the motivation to inject 20b+ into their characters, why aren't hero players finding the same motivation?

What about the hero job would motivate you personally, or anyone for that matter, to devote 20b+ of funding into this job choice instead of something like an NL, Pally, Corsair, BM, MM, or mage, to name a few?

If you are finding difficulty in answering that last question, then I'm inclined to believe that something about the hero job itself, and not the players that represent the class, is unattractive or undesirable.

I understand what you are saying that in order for meaningful changes to be made, endgame-level and fully funded heroes need to be represented. But the job is so undesirable at the moment that no player is willing to dedicate the level of commitment required to get a hero to this fully funded and endgame state. Before a fully funded and endgame hero can be observed so that the finishing tweaks can be made from a job-balancing perspective, changes first have to be made to the hero job in order to motivate players to fund a hero character to this endgame level.

 

I'm not ovv but well..

Let's be honest, VERY few people will ever manage to have half of this amount of funding because it takes a lot of effort or a lot of luck.
If we disconsider luck, we all know how hard it is to have this amount of funding.
Very few players will devote hundreds or thousands of hours to this game to reach such state, and these are the guys who creates the metagame, they just want to be the most effective as possible on farming and bossing.
Just because a class is at the bottom of the list of the most effective classes it doesn't mean that the class itself sucks. Of course it's numbers might not be always as good as the classes at the top of the metagame, but that doesn't make the class inviable, if someone really likes and want to play as a Hero, they can.

Even if we consider that Hero is at the bottom of the metagame options, it doesn't make it unplayable. The metagame will always exist and it's constantly changing. There will always be a class at the bottom of the metagame. It is proved that Hero is able to a significant amount of damage if well funded even on bosses that aren't cleave friendly, but most of the effective players will prefer to invest on the most effective classes.

 

Am I correct in understanding that your argument is that, because it is not possible for every class to equally sit at the top of the meta, the ones at the bottom shouldn't be buffed?

I agree with you that there will always be a gap between the top of the meta and the bottom of the meta. This is unavoidable without completely homogenizing all of the classes into a single build.

Where I disagree with you, however, is that I believe steps should be taken to decrease the gap between the top and bottom of the meta. The closer we have to absolute balance imo the better.

My biggest gripe with the hero class isn't even their damage numbers though. It is the fact that there is absolutely no reason for anybody to choose being a hero over any other class.

I think there is a reason why you avoided quoting this question of mine:

Other classes that aren't toward the top of the meta have some sort of group utility to offer so at the very least they can be muled, or more importantly, an active player of one of these classes can replace one of the would-be mules in a group composition. But heroes don't even have this niche. Because of this, inclusivity for heroes becomes an issue. It becomes hard for heroes to find a spot in end game content. Why would anyone choose to recruit a hero into their group, when they have literally nothing to offer? The spot a hero would be given is more appropriately filled by either a class that has a higher effective DPM while bossing or a class that offers some amount of utility to the rest of the group.

I don't need heroes to be a close contender in endgame damage numbers. I just need them to have a niche group utility role, just like most other classes in the game. This way heroes would at least be welcomed into group compositions instead of how it currently feels like the group is doing a hero player a favor by allowing them into the group.

Would it make heroes muleable? Sure, but why is this an issue? Every other group utility role is already muleable too. I'm going to copy paste one of my questions from the other recent hero thread:

 

Funding a hero is literally the same thing as funding a paladin, and there are well funded paladins out there. In fact, investing into a well scrolled sword for either a paladin or hero is economical because you can play both interchangeably. There are well funded shadowers out there and they're unarguably worse-off than heroes.

You don't really hear about end-game heroes because it's too easy to transition out of Heroes. Like I've said in every other post I've made in this thread, Heroes are an entry-level class that mostly new players pick up. If they stick around long enough, they realize that voting on an alternative account to start a washing project is ideal, because let's face the facts - heroes will never out damage the ranged attackers simply because washing exists, and it's a balance mechanic in this server. I'm not saying it's necessarily a good one, but it's one I think we need.

 

I never said that Hero shouldn't be buffed. My argument was explaining why some classes will always be less likely to get heavily funded than others, and that's not a issue with a single class specifically, but just how any metagame works.

There are reasons though, just not many things incredibly relevant to endgame as single target classes do, but still they can do it fine, just not as effectively as classes from the top of the metagame.
But as I said, I actually think Hero can be buffed, just felt like explaining all that thing about metagame because all the time I see people talking like Hero is literally unplayable just because it's numbers won't go as high on single target situations.

I didn't quoted but my first comment talks exactly about that. I explained people motivations when devoting thousands of hours to this game, and that when you're THAT invested in the game, you likely will choose a class that has a better pottential, literally one of the most effective tactic available, and that's literally the opposite of playing a class from the bottom of the metagame (even though we agreed that being at the bottom can be fine).

Anyway, I in fact think that Hero can be buffed somehow. But most people just screams for more damage and do stupid comparisons like dummy single target damage Hero vs Corsair, and I believe that's not the way.

Maybe some tweaks to Armor Crash? That shit saved me and some friends from bad times doing HT where bishops dc/died white hitting left head, fuck you defense buff, maybe it could have a % of removing magic/weapon cancel? I guess someone already suggested this on the forums somewhere.

 

Also, I never said we need a hero representative to make changes, but I do think the Hero doomer sentiment is being overblown and is driven mostly because there isn't someone to show them the way. I'm just curious what people even think a top-end Hero could put out DPM-wise - and I feel like most people don't even know - simply because we don't have one to show us. If you take JDP out of the picture, people in this server would think that 3m dpm is close to the top-end damage because of the existing representation. However, because JDP showed 3.3m dpm on PB, we know that 3.3m is achievable. JDP is good, but even he - by definition isn't the top-end hero because there are gear upgrades he could still make today. And like I mentioned before, that 3.3m was done while managing a party, so it only makes sense to assume that a Hero in the exact same scenario WITHOUT party management duties could output higher numbers - albeit marginally.

I feel like people are just misunderstanding my line of questioning, even though I've explicitly stated otherwise.
Not once did I say heroes couldn't use more buffs in some area. (Shit I've probably advocated more hero buffs in the past than most people here :V) However, when someone asks for buffs - especially when it's DPM-related, but they can't answer what they would actually want, it brings the conversation to a dead end, and the goal posts move around constantly.

If you knew how I play, you would know that I don't really value item-based progression all that much. I think every class is playable for their own strengths with about 1-2b investment in their weapon. I'm not really obsessive of becoming the strongest of any class.

I do already play my Hero as a main cleave in JC, and I will use him as my main cleaver in Zak soon. But to answer your question more specifically - I wouldn't invest 20b on a sword until I've balanced out my other investments that yield a better return, but that might not be too far out of reach. Maybe after I've perfected my bow and claw, I'd work on perfecting another sword so I can use them on my Hero and Paladin?

The problem is not that I don't think investing into a Hero is a good idea. The problem is I have too much shit to do in this game.

 

Conclusion of the day, heroes is bad but nothing like unplayable, sometimes people overstate how bad heroes is, maplestory is a game with such low mechanics and quite simple, there's some optimizations, but that's all.
Since the game have this nature, the most important thing is DAMAGE, classes who can't bring utility (to make other people deal more damage) or actually deal very good damage, is in a bad spot.
-Ovv and akash brought interesting numbers, demonstrating heroes isn't in a horrible spot, its just hard to compare people with diff gears, and the lack of representation can make someone with the class believe they're useless on later stages, that's not true.
We have 3 classes in a weird spot on the actual moment, and it's like karn said, anyone with insane gears want to optimize their time, but this is a problem too, this whole situation show us rerolling is the meta, we clearly have a problem here, maybe not big like people suggest, but clearly deserve some changes.

Almost no one disagree with that, and the debate isn't more about ideas of classes changes, and more about people PoV about class balancement, maybe returning the discussion to OP objective when he did it is better.

 

thread = tldr
conclusion = buff axe

 

At the end of the day, the real issue with hero's is that Selquin made a worst class tier list and made the server believe that it is the worst class.

I do agree that hero's still need a niche, and I think that niche should end up being cleave. How broken would it be to make brandish hit 4, 5, or even 6 targets?

 

will be pretty broken imo, leveling at 7f will be even easier, and bosses like jc/zak will take less time than now
cleave abilities are already strong and shouldnt be buff or changed.